Louise Fuller - Craving His Forbidden Innocent

He hesitated, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say.

‘I’m willing, for her sake, to call a truce between us—but don’t think for one moment that means I want to kiss and make up with you.’

Actually that wasn’t true, Basa thought a half-second later. The kissing part anyway.

Picking up his wine glass, he glanced over at Mimi’s taut face and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Was she remembering that evening, that dance, that kiss? Or, like him, had her mind zeroed in on the moment in his bedroom when he’d slipped the straps of her dress over her shoulders and watched it pool at her feet…?

He shifted in his seat, wishing he could shift the memory of what had happened and what had so nearly happened at his sister’s birthday party, but he’d been trying to do that for the last two years and it was still etched into his brain like an awkward tattoo from a gap year in Thailand. And it wasn’t just her soft lips or the scent she wore that had burrowed into his subconscious.

Watching her that night, he’d found her beautiful and sexy. But, more than that, intriguing. As a teenager she’d been a regular visitor to the family home, and thanks to her tomboyish clothes, tied-back hair, clunky glasses and gauche manner, she’d been easily distinguished as apart from the ‘glossy posse’, as he’d christened the rest of his sister’s friends.

Of course he’d had no time for anything but work after his father’s stroke had forced him to take over the running of the family business. So he hadn’t seen her properly for several years when she’d wandered into the ballroom at Alicia’s party, looking as apprehensive as an antelope approaching a waterhole.

But that wasn’t why he’d done a double take.

Picking up his cup, he downed the rest of his coffee. He needed that hit of raw caffeine to counteract the impact of that moment when Mimi Miller had metaphorically ambushed him and wrestled him to the ground.

She had been wearing a long, high-necked white dress that had seemed to ripple over the heart-stopping silhouette of her body, and her waist-length blonde hair had hung loose over her shoulders like a golden cape. But it hadn’t been the duckling-to-swan transformation that had stopped him in his tracks, for at that point he hadn’t actually worked out who she was. No, it had been something else—a kind of hesitancy that tugged at a memory hovering at the edges of his mind,

And then, as she’d turned to pluck a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, he’d felt his heart stop beating. The dress had been backless, provocative without the overt sexiness of a low-cut bodice or short hemline, and, watching her cautious progress around the room, he’d felt a strange mix of resentment and responsibility and an inexplicable need to stay close.

Too close.

Close enough to feel the heat of her skin. Close enough to let his hand slide around her waist and press against the satin-smooth skin at the base of her back. Close enough to get burnt.

His lungs suddenly felt as though they were full of wet cement.

He’d told himself that it was just a dance, and a duty dance at that, but even before the music had ended, and even though he’d known by then that she was his sister’s friend, and therefore a complication he didn’t need and normally wouldn’t choose, he’d pulled her closer, moulding her body to his.

Lost in her scent, and the heat of her bare skin, he’d kissed her all the way to his bedroom. And there they would have finished what they’d started—only he hadn’t had any condoms on him. He’d gone back down to the party, to grab a bottle of champagne to console them both, but then, walking back through the ballroom, he’d switched his phone on—the phone he could remember Mimi taking from him and switching off—and the world as he had known it had crumbled to dust.

Gazing down at the list of messages from his lawyer and his accountant, each one growing increasingly frantic, he’d felt his heart turn to stone. A brief call to his lawyer had made it clear that he needed to leave the party immediately, but discreetly, so as not to alert Alicia, and just as he’d been finishing the call he’d caught a glimpse of Mimi.

At the time he’d assumed she’d come looking for him, and he remembered how guilty he’d felt at leaving her alone for so long.

His heartbeat stalled. Now he would be willing to bet his entire fortune that she hadn’t been looking for him, but he hadn’t known that at the time. Trusting idiot that he’d been, he’d set off on his way to follow her.

Only it had turned out she’d made other plans.

Mission clearly accomplished, she had been sneaking out through the back door.

Watching her clutch the arm of a floppy-haired young man as she climbed into his made-you-look orange Lamborghini, he’d been devastated.

He took another mouthful of coffee and swallowed, wishing it could wash away the bitterness in his heart.

It had only been later, when the scandal had broken and he’d had time to think, that he’d realised he had been set up. All of it—her kissing him, her taking his phone—had just been an attempt to distract him, and as soon as his back had been turned it had been time for her to go. She’d even made up some lame excuse to Alicia about feeling ill.

The fact that he had been so easily duped had bruised his ego, but it had been the disconnect between the seemingly sweet child he’d once known and the woman she had become that had been most unsettling.

He would never forgive Mimi and her relatives for what they had done. Their greed and duplicity had nearly ruined his family. But it was the knowledge of how close he’d come to having unprotected sex with her, and the possible consequences of that act, that had convinced him to come to this lunch.

This time he was going to protect his family—and teach her a lesson for taking him as a fool.

‘Okay, fine.’

Mimi’s voice pulled him back to the present and, tipping his head back, he met her gaze.

‘Okay fine, what?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m willing to call a truce if you are. But I don’t really see any point in us dragging this conversation out any longer.’

‘I disagree. We need to discuss you filming the wedding. She’s serious, you know?’ he added. ‘About wanting you to do it.’

She raised her chin, and he felt the shock of her forget-me-not-blue eyes zigzag through his body like a jolt of electricity.

‘I know she is, but whatever she said about it being your idea, I know it wasn’t, so you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to do it.’

She glanced away, and he felt his shoulders stiffen against the crisp white poplin of his shirt. Her desire to leave was so tangible it felt like a living, breathing thing on the table between them, and had this conversation been happening at any point up until a couple of days ago he would have been showing her the door. Hell, he would have been holding it open for her.

But that had been before he’d spoken to Alicia.

His jaw tightened. After his mother’s death, and the series of strokes that had left his father’s health permanently impaired, he had sworn to protect his sister and do everything in his power to make her happy. And he still felt the same way—perhaps even more so. It was, after all, partly his fault that their father was so fragile and that the business was only just now recovering its former strength.

Clearly he’d rather Mimi wasn’t within a hundred miles of the wedding, but Alicia’s happiness and his family’s reputation were all that mattered to him. Suggesting Mimi film the wedding had been the first thing to come to mind as he had tried to stem his sister’s tears and find an alternative to Mimi being maid of honour.